Introduction
“How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”
For our Explorations unit, we were tasked to learn a new skill related to our elective classes. When I heard of this assignment my mind was straight toward puppets. Why? Because I think puppets are neat. Especially hand puppets, which is why I decided I was going to make one. In Film we never really learned how to do proper prop design and or puppeteering (For obvious reasons). So I was super excited to get the opportunity to make one.
Research: I started this project off with a bit of research. I wanted to know first of all the history of puppets, and then how to make a puppet. Because I feel like the only true way to make any sort of connection with my puppet is to understand its history and everything surrounding it.
After doing some research I learned that Puppets date back to 1000 BC in India, but back then they were mainly little dolls. Similar to marionettes. And then traditional hand puppets date back to Medival times. I also learned about many different types of puppets, those being Sock puppets, full-body puppets, finger puppets, marionettes, and shadow puppets. As well as hand puppets but that’s the bulk of my Project.
I also researched techniques on how to puppeteer a puppet and some very needed basics. Those being, all mouth movement comes from the lower jaw, sympathetic movement, and the three biggest points when puppeteering, Focus, Breathing, and weight.
Making The Puppet: after learning the basics I could finally start crafting my puppet. I first started off by buying some supplies. Those being Foam, green fur, wire, welding rods, a wooden dowel, spray adhesive, and felt.
After purchasing the supplies I could finally start building, I first started off by shaping the head. The skull of the puppet is made up of foam, which I was able to shape with the use of a bread knife and a pair of scissors. I then did relatively the same process for the body then combined the two with the fur. I then went to work on the hands and arms, this was a whole process that I went more in-depth during my actual presentation. Linked below if interested.
Reflection: Some big takeaways I took away from this project was that puppet making is a lot of trial and error. Like I had to stop and restart a lot of time, but it sort of worked out in the end. As well as using Fabric Scissors, I accidentally used normal scissors to cut fur and almost broke them. When I could’ve been using normal scissors the whole time. I also realized I should’ve bought everything I needed before. hand because there were some periods in time were I didn’t have anything to do. Some things I didn’t quite get to do but wanted to were, make a short skit with my puppet, properly learn how to use the two arm rods, and how to film properly with a puppet.
Here are the slides to my presentation:
Music recording
Unfortunately, I ran out of time to do my music recording, but I would like to share what I learned from my friends who did it. The purpose of the music recording project was to learn how to record instruments in the music studio. My friends: Evan, Nate, and Charlie made a cover of “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey. It seemed like they were able to make a decent song despite being musically inept. Here is their song:
LYRICAL essay
Our final project in English this semester was our lyrical essay. A lyrical Essay isn’t an easy thing to describe. The concept is very broad and confusing which is why I found some difficulty in completing the assignment. We had the freedom to write anything we wanted just as long as it included footnotes and an annotated bibliography. I decided to write about Circadian Rhythms, which is the internal clock in your body that tells you when you should sleep or not. I think something that I valued about this project was how much freedom we were able to have when doing it. we were able to write about anything we wanted to.